Somaliland From Nonbeing to EU Special Arrangement in 2013

An examination of the International Politics of Recognition:

Abstract

Somalia Narrative: Sovereignty’s presumed precedence as the fundamental rule or structure of authority in the international society is challenged in the case of Somaliland, where one state’s sovereignty (Somalia) is at stake if another’s (Somaliland) is recognised.

Somaliland narrative: Somalia shouldn’t fear Somaliland’s recognition, as Somaliland was a separate country from 26th June 26 1960. Therefore, Somalia illegally annexed Somaliland through a manipulated referendum and constitution, disregarding the will of the Somaliland people and its 1960s politicians. The independence was given to two countries, not to two regions. An incredible, yet false, story about Somalia has been told since the 1960s.

Somalia Narrative: Through an analysis of how recognition of statehood is attained in the case of Somaliland, which received international endorsement of its claim to autonomy in 2013, the thesis shows that recognition of state sovereignty as a distinct political order rests on historically contingent political processes of opinion formations.

Somaliland Narrative: In the 1960s, Somaliland was transferred to Somalia’s mafioso mentality, and in 2012, it was indirectly recognised by the international community as a de facto state, causing it to be seen as a secessionist region from Somalia. Blindfolding the Somalilander population prevented them from realising the incompetence of their politicians in the 1960s and 2012, resulting in their leaders prioritising development aid money over maintaining the original status of the Somaliland Republic since two countries united on 1st July 1960.

Somalia Narrative: This means that the current political order rests on a paradox, that no natural principles exist behind the granting of sovereignty, which further means that sovereignty is inherently coupled to a constraint, namely that self-determination is not an ultimate principle.

Somaliland Narrative: During the period of 2012-2025, Somaliland and Somalia were in a situation where Italy is against the recognition of Somaliland, which perceived Somalia as a country acquired from the Sultanate of Zanzibar in 1892. Somalia adopted a mindset of their former colonial rulers, viewing Somaliland, which gained independence from the UK on 26th June 1960, as a country they acquired on 1st July 1960. The paradox of Somaliland’s status arose from the 2012 London talks where Somalia, through propaganda, framed the downgrading of Somaliland from a country to a region as a form of internal self-determination.

International Community Narrative: The thesis’s research question, how has the international community managed dilemmas in regards to Somaliland’s claim of recognition as a sovereign state? investigates how this paradox is handled. The study shows how the international community applied various storylines in the discursive struggles that gradually constituted and reconstituted what Somaliland’s identity was about and how it fitted in the discursive production of the current international system. It was on the foundation of several previous articulations and selections, which had depicted Somaliland as a responsible agent, that the international community came to constitute Somaliland as a self-governing part of the federal Somalia in 2013.

Somaliland Narrative: The international community proposed, by making the Republic of Somaliland “Somaliland as a self-governing part of the federal Somalia in 2013”. Somaliland’s status has been changed; from a country recognised on 26th June 1960, to a northern region that declared independence on 18th May 1991 (Somaliland perspective 18th May is Liberation Day and reclaiming day their 26th June 1960 independence). Thus, a separatist region such as Somaliland must be addressed accordingly: By either compelling them to engage in dialogue with Somalia (the parent state), confronting the rebels in Hargeisa, or continuing to resist recognition of Somaliland for next 50 years until Somalia can overpower their desire for recognition. The UN and various nations backing Somalia against Somaliland recognition concur with this strategy.

The UN and international community started themselves involves praising Somaliland leaders with vague positive feedback, highlighting Somaliland’s progress in contrast to Somalia’s failures. But under international law, a country seeking recognition is obligated to defend itself if a stronger Somalia attacks Somaliland in the past and present, future. Weaponry and troops will be covertly supplied by nations that support Somalia’s rejection of Somaliland’s recognition, thereby undermining the international community’s ostensibly naive stance on the impending aggression. Isolated in this fight, Somaliland faces high risk of slow encroachment. Somalia’s goal is to absorb Somaliland, using all forms of warfare to impact its people and territory.

The international community’s continuous analysis of Somaliland’s statehood without actions will only serve to delay its recognition and hasten its demise. A disastrous situation is unfolding in the Horn of Africa next 20 years!

1. Introduction: Setting The Stage

“We live, we are told, in a world of states, which coexist in an international system of states. States in a state system, they insist, are what exist in the world… Moreover, the system of states is coextensive with the world… The trouble with this set of stories is that it rests on a contestable claim to scholarship. States do not simply exist in the world and the modern states system is not coextensive with the world” (R.B.J. Walker, 2004)

The Day Somaliland Recognition was put in hostage mode by the international community. When Somaliland was granted federal autonomy by the international community in the Somali Compact in 2013, Somalia’s unbounded sovereignty was at the same time removed from Somalia. The Somali Compact granted Somaliland self-determination, which meant the ability to ‘collect’ and for the time being ‘epitomise’ the people of Somaliland’s sovereignty within the territory of the Somali State. What follows is, then, that the “rights of sovereignty is regarded as distinguishable from the exercise of authority” (Wilks, 1975:191). In this regard, the current political order rests on a paradox; that sovereignty is inherently linked to a constraint of authority, and the principles of self-determination and territorial integrity are not ultimate, but highly political and contingent principles. The recognition of Somaliland as a self-governing entity appeared rather uncontroversial. The empirical question, then, becomes how was this paradox handled? How could the recognition of mutually exclusive claims to sovereignty at one and the same time be concealed and revealed, and not appear as a contradiction?

1.2 The entities in question…

Somaliland declared its independence from Somalia shortly after General Siad Barre’s regime was overthrown in January 1991, thereby presenting the international community with the question of whether to recognise it as a state. Somaliland achieved independence on 26^th June 1960 from Great Britain, and united five days later with Somalia, the former Italian colony, to form the Somali Republic. It is from this union Somaliland seeks to withdraw by claiming re-installment of its former status as independent state. Several scholars have argued that Somaliland has a strong historical and legal claim to full statehood (Bryden, 2004; Pham, 2011, Geldenhyus, 2009). The international community has consistently evaded answering this claim and Somaliland’s secessionist origin has condemned it to more than four decades as contested statehood (Farley, 2010:777).

A UN strategy to prevent international recognition of Somaliland was created in September 2013 at Brussels, supported by the Somali Federal Government (Hawiye & Darood politicians), and the EU (mainly Italy and couple of others), without input from the UK or others countries who support Somaliland recognition as well as pro-Somaliland politicians:

The mutually exclusive claims of authorities in Mogadishu (Somalia Capital) and Hargeisa (Somaliland Capital) was momentary set in 2013, when the international community and Somalia endorsed the Somali Compact (SC), a roadmap on ‘the priorities of’ Somalia’s political process and development between 2014-2016 (EU, 2013). The Compact nominated “a new beginning for a sovereign, secure, democratic, united and federal Somalia at peace with itself and the world, and for the benefit of its people” (SC, 2013:3). In regards to Somaliland’s recognition aspirations, the SC more crucially settled Somaliland’s political destination in a section entitled the Somaliland Special Arrangement (SSA), which acknowledged Somaliland’s development efforts and sets out in “institutionalising on-going Somaliland processes and initiatives within an overarching and equal partnership between the Somaliland government, its people and the international community” (SC, 2013:20).

Somaliland’s current status as a special arrangement raises the obvious central question of how Somaliland has moved from non-existent to an object of recognition in the international discourse. Somaliland’s discursive formation also ties to the question of political order and through which processes this order is ascribed meaning and recognised.

2.3 Conditioning the Gaze

The previous sections established the thesis’s special gaze and object of investigation that will approach Somaliland as an immobile case of ‘how the meaning of sovereignty is outplayed via political recognition’, which will be explored through a discourse analysis. The relationship between the discursive practise of (non)recognition that gradually constitutes Somaliland as a political entity can be illustrated as:

The relationship between the discursive practise of recognition and the discursive object of Somaliland that participates in the discourse production of sovereignty will be explored by examining the international community’s articulations of Somaliland over time and in space through a diachronic and a synchronic analysis.

As Somaliland is the object through which the practise of recognition/non-recognition is observed, Somaliland will only appear when communicated about by the international community and not granted a position from where to speak. Somalia, from which Somaliland has spawned, is equally not considered. Secessionist claims are often assigned to the origin state, however in the concrete case Somalia’s sovereignty and statehood is equally at stake. Hence, as we shall see, the international actors when communicating about Somaliland’s recognition claims continuously refers the question to the AU or/and the international community, hence Somalia is not rendered an authority in the Somaliland matter.

2.4.1 How the EU and UN used to misguide Somaliland Sovereignty Case

I have identified three stages, which Somaliland went through from 1991-2003 constitution it as an object of non-being to an object of non- recognition ending with an object of recognition, where the strategies (discourse of stateness and discourse of sovereignty) participated in the discursive formation that gradually, but not inevitably established Somaliland as recognised. These three stages suggest a process of discursive selection, but they are analytical constructs not to be understood as ontological titles. The stages have been constructed by careful reading of the empirical material and are applied to structure the rather detailed description of the case, and show the reader how articulations on Somaliland shifted and narrowed between 1991-2013. The three headings emphases that the diachronic analysis is focuses on how Somaliland was constituted as object of international discursive practises by focusing on how international actors observed, responded to and addressed Somaliland. The diachronic analysis of historical constitution will act as the central analysis for answering the thesis’s research question and further set the condition for the synchronic analysis.

Having showed how we arrived at the events in 2013, which rendered Somaliland as a special arrangement, the diachronic analysis is used as a basis for the synchronic analysis, which will study how the recognition of Somaliland produces meaning to sovereignty. The synchronic analysis thereby focuses on actuality by analysing how something is discursively structured within a specific time. Hence, the synchronic analysis presents a static perspective and departs from the present (Malmvig, 2006:35).

The synchronic analysis starts with the international community’s current political management of Somaliland by focusing on the specific event The New Deal for Somalia conference held in Brussels September 16th 2013 and its Special Arrangement for Somaliland (SSA), which is the special section in the Somali Compact (SC) that presents the development priorities for Somaliland under the New Deal partnership (SC, 2013:21). This analysis’s starting point is, in other words, the study’s selected contingent end. However, in order for us to understand this current event, where the discursivity on Somaliland can be argued to have raised a critical mass resulting in the constitution of Somaliland as a recognised political entity, we need to have examined the historical constitutions leading up to Somaliland’s establishment as a special arrangement in 2013. This highlights that this is an anti-essential analysis, which means that the 2013-event is historically contingent, resting on processes of constitution as showed in the diachronic analysis. Settling with the synchronic analysis alone would have consequences for this study’s enunciations, since I would only have articulations and statements made in regards to the conference, which would render the conference prediscursive and not how this conference is an expression of something new.

The strategies the international community is presumed to apply in their articulations Somaliland, discourses of stateness and discourse of sovereignty, will also be applied as observational concepts to analyse the statements being made by the international community will be analysed. Furthermore, scholarly contributions on international politics of recognition and the current conduct of sovereignty will be utilized to reflect on and discuss the analytical findings. A concept that will be central is the concept of contractualisation, which is presented by Helle Malmvig in the context of European democracy and reform in the Arab World (Malmvig, 2014). Malmvig has examined how liberal governmentality is applied as a management tool of control in EU’s democratic initiatives in the Arab world. The concept of ‘governmentality’, was introduced by Michel Foucault in 1978, understood as a “distinct liberal mode of power that seeks to regulate and steer the actions of specific target groups toward certain goals, yet does so through ideas of responsible and consenting subjectivities”

(Malmvig, 2014:295). The concepts of governmentality and contractualisation offers distinct analytical perspectives on the questions of power and governance that Malmvig argues are at stake in modern western democratic promotions towards to developing world. The two concepts will be used to analyse which kind of strategies that are applied by the international community in their management of Somaliland in the SSA. Another analytical perspective presented by Malmvig is the concept of self-regulation, which is also part of Foucault’s concept of governmentality, which as the word imply practises installed to govern the subject through mentality. This concept will be used to examine how Somaliland self-governance is framed in SSA.

3.1.1 Setting the Stage – The emergence of Somaliland

The plight of Somaliland can be argued to be largely a product of contemporary history, and our narrative will begin shortly before the advent of colonial rule (Lewis, 2008). During the pre-colonial period, Somali society was predominantly nomadic, and organized on the basis of kinship, with social and political relations structured around clans, sub-clans and families. Ad hoc assemblies of elders managed the internal and external affairs of the respective groups, drawing on customary law (xeer) as well as the Islamic Sharia. The British signed various protection treaties with clan elders in the northwest, establishing the Protectorate of British Somaliland in 1887. Somalia, the southern part, came under Italian colonisation.

Somaliland enjoyed a brief existence as an internationally recognised sovereign state in 1960 between the exit of its British protectorate and its union with the ex-­‐Italian colony of southern Somalia (Bryden, 2004: 342). Of the eighteen African countries that became independent in 1960, Somaliland was the fourth. It was welcomed by thirty-five nations including five permanent members in the United Nations Security Council.

During a brief period of parliamentary civilian rule (1960-69), the new country experimented with western democracy, which according to Fadal et. al proved poorly adapted to the stateless, clan-based nature of Somali politics (1999:15). The post-independence period was characterized by a flourishing of clan-based political parties, heavy reliance on budgetary support from other countries, growing public discontent particularly in the northwest (present- day Somaliland), visible corruption and over-centralisation of power in the southern capital, Mogadishu (Ibrahim and Terlinden, 2007:69).

Following a military coup in 1969, General Siad Barre launched a path of ‘scientific socialism’, supported by Soviet military and development aid (Lewis, 1998). Barre’s vision demanded the dismantling of the traditional clan-based social-order, economic networks and political institutions upon which the majority of Somalis still depended. Deserted by the Soviets in 1977, Somalia experienced a huge influx of Western development and humanitarian aid. Massive amounts of foreign aid were diverted and misappropriated by the regime and very little of the assistance ever reached the north. During the 1980s, it became evident that the Isaaq clan had been singled out as a target for political, economic, social and cultural oppression. The dissatisfaction with the regime led to the establishment of the mainly Issaq- based Somali National Movement (SNM) in 1981. By 1982, the SNM had established bases in Ethiopia, from where it fought an armed struggle against the regimes forces in the north, initially in the form of underground cross-border incursions (Fadal et. Al, 1999:18). The government countered by redoubling its campaign of brutal repression. In 1988 the SNM launched an all-out offensive against government forces in the northern towns Hargeisa and Burco. The government replied with brutal ground and aerial bombardment. Over 50,000 people are estimated to have died, and generating massive displacement, more than 500,000 fled across the border to Ethiopia. What remained of northern towns and villages was systematically destroyed by government forces, plundered and scattered with hundreds of thousands of landmines. Other rebel movements were growing simultaneously and two years after the bombing of the northern part, Siad Barre was ousted in January 1991 and replaced by an interim government.

The SNM had originally intended to maintain the union with the south, but signs of southern domination made SNM announce that the northern regions were withdrawing from the union and reasserting their sovereign independence as the Republic of Somaliland (Ibrahim & Terlinden, 2008:70). In the south, none of the competing factions were strong enough to take power and fill out the vacuum Somalia was left in, which evolved into chaos and gradually a form of stateless order. Somalia has been without a functioning state since 1991 (Møller, 2009:4).

Somaliland has emerged from this complex political reality and defines itself with respect to the territory, boundaries, and people of the former British Somaliland protectorate, which covers 137,600 square kilometres and today has an estimated population of 3.5 million. The de jure borders of the Somali state remains to this day, and Somaliland’s claims of re-instalment of its former status as an independent state has not been internationally endorsed. In December 2005 Somaliland formally applied for AU, but the application has never been discussed by the African Commission (ICG, 2006). In 2013, the New Deal for Somalia Conference recognised Somaliland as a self-governing part of the federal Somalia.

3.2 Somaliland as an object of non-being: from Northwest Somalia to ‘Somaliland’

The first stage identified runs from Somaliland’s claimed unilateral independence in 1991 to the early 2000s. In this period Somaliland can be seen as what I have termed an object of non- being.

3.2.1 The Northwest of Somalia: How the UN tried to hide completely Somaliland from the face of earth as to protect their former UN trusteeship Somalia of 1949-1960 until South Africa step-in in 2003 to correct the issues.

From 1991 to the early 2000s, Somaliland is non-existent, which means that Somaliland is not thematisied as a category by any international actors. Or that is, Northwest Somalia, which is the territory Somaliland makes claim to, does appear in public documents, for instance, in a UNCHR report as the agency operates from this part of the country (UNCHR, 2003).

Another statement placing itself within this discursive struggle on the status of Somaliland comes from the South African Department of Foreign Affairs, which in April 2003 authored a legal brief on Somaliland’s claim of sovereign status stating “[I]t is undeniable that Somaliland does indeed qualify for statehood, and it is incumbent on the international community to recognise it. Any efforts to deny or delay would not only put the international community at risk of ignoring the most stable region in the Horn, it would impose untold hardship upon the people of Somaliland due to the denial of foreign assistance that recognition entails” (Brenthurst Foundation, 2011:23). This statement affirms the international community’s sovereign authority in matters of recognition, but also brings up the conception of sovereignty as responsibility. According to the South African Department of Foreign Affairs, the sovereign responsibility reside with the international community, which is incumbent to let Somaliland join the establishment of sovereign states as it qualifies for statehood. The statement engaged in a discursive struggle over what sovereignty entails and how this sovereign authority should be managed.

Furthermore, the UN mentions Somaliland two times in their 2004-Yearbook of the United Nations, one in regards to refugees and another making a comment on Somaliland’s “notable exception” as participant in the Somali peace talks, which was initiated in Kenya in 2002 and ended with the establishment of the Transitional Federal Parliament, the first governmental institution in Somalia in 14 years (UN, 2004a:110). These two examples show how Somaliland is articulated as an object in central UN reports; a country profile and a year rapport that provides the overview over the year activities undertaking by the UN. However, Somaliland does not appear anywhere else in the official UN vocabulary (Hoyle, 2000:86; Anderson, 2010:1).

3.3 Somaliland as an Object of Non-recognition: Somalilanders suffering from 1991-2003

Somaliland remained below the international community’s radar for most of 1990s and early 2000s. Despite the presence of organisations like the UN and EU in Somaliland, which provided “money to (and influence over) some of the most fundamental aspects of the Somaliland Government’s interface with the population, including its school curricula, taxation, and police force” (Phillips, 2013), Somaliland was kept off the chart by reference to the northwest region of Somalia, sometimes followed by “Somaliland” in quotations (UNHCR, 2003; WHO, 2000; UN, 2006). The acknowledgments of Somaliland’s ability to fulfil state responsibility seen in the statement made by the South African Department of Foreign Affairs in 2003 and the debate between the members of the British parliament in 2004 can furthermore be argued to be short of recognition, as no formal recognition was granted. However, these actors’ articulations did come to engage in the discursive battle over Somaliland in the second identified phase that runs from 2005-2009.

The storylines attached to Somaliland by the South African Department of Foreign Affairs and the members of the British parliament can be argued to have created a discourse collation. The statements applied to speak of Somaliland’s state capacity was really a discussion of Somaliland’s ability to meet the claims of discourses of stateness and as the international community’s articulations on Somaliland continues within this frame of reference a discourse structuration can be argued to dominate the political realm. Furthermore, Hajer’s other condition for discourse coalition, what he calls discourse institutionalisation, can also be argued to have been fulfilled, as the articulation of Somaliland’s state capacity is reflected in institutional practises: for instance, when several European countries sign agreements with the Somaliland government concerning the repatriation of denied asylum seekers, as well as aid agreements isolated from the wider Somalia. In these agreements, Somaliland is established vis-à-vis its own domestic society.

The phase 2005-2009 is thematised as the movement from object of non-being to object of non-recognised, and divided into two sections: The first describes how Somaliland became an object with ascribed subjectivity by the AU from previously having been completely silent on their stance to Somaliland.

3.3.1 To be or not to be? The AU’s Fact-Finding Mission

AU follow Somalia narrative from 1991-2005 again until South Africa intervened in the behalf of Somaliland behind door close: The forerunner to AU, the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), had up through the 1990s refused to recognise Somaliland’s independence, citing the maxim that there would be chaos if colonial boundaries were not observed in post-independence Africa (Deng, 1996:160). In its founding charter, the OAU enshrined “provisions against the re-drawing of borders inherited at independence out of concern for possible future colonial interference” (ICG, 2006:13). This reluctance to interfere in territorial borders of member states can be seen in the AU’s Constitutive Act Article 4, which requires all members to respect “borders existing on achievement of independence” (AU, 2000:6). Hence, the Charter of the OAU promoted the external sovereignty through the principle of non-interference and uti possidetis juris. The latter, a principle of international law providing that newly formed sovereign states should have the same frontiers that their preceding colonised territory had before their independence, assigned the African borders with permanence (Gandois, 2008:7). Hence, the Charter spoke of state sovereignty as a closed and fixed concept. Despite this stance, the concept is nonetheless subject of on-going management, which could be seen when the OAU passed a resolution at a June 1991 meeting that reaffirmed the indivisibility and territorial integrity of the Somali Republic, thereby strongly opposing the Republic of Somaliland’s declaration of independence (Deng, 1996:160). At least publicly, the OAU did not deal with Somaliland’s independence claim between 1991 and 2005, a period when Somalia’s government had manifestly disintegrated (UN, 2004:2-7; ICG, 2006:1).

AU support Somaliland with the final recommendations of the 2005 AU Fact-Finding defer the matter of recognition to the international community: Given their access to historical documentation on Somaliland and Somalia, the USA, UK, EU are best positioned to initiate Somaliland’s recognition.

The official approach to Somaliland remained dismissive until 2005, when the AU Commission established an AU fact-finding mission to Somaliland. What happened for AU to send a fact-finding mission can only be speculated on, as no public announcement was made prior to the mission. It has further not been possible to locate any AU source that addresses Somaliland in the timespan between the OAU’s statement on the matter of session in 1991 until the AU fact finding-mission in 2005. The outcome of the mission was a four-page document in which AU displays sympathy for Somaliland’s case, and in very unambiguous terms recommends that the case should be dealt with on terms that acknowledges the territory’s unique political history (AU, 2005). The document, however, remained unpublished, which does add to the discursive speculative analysis and says something about the highly sensitive conclusions and recommendations. The document has been leaked and it is from this I now refer.

The AU Fact-Finding Mission stated: “The fact that the union between Somaliland and Somalia was never ratified and also malfunctioned when it went into action from 1960 to 1990, makes Somaliland’s search for recognition historically unique and self-justified in African political history. Objectively viewed, the case should not be linked to the notion of “opening a pandora’s box. As such, the AU should find a special method of dealing with this outstanding case” (AU, 2005: paragraph 8). A discursive move is taken by acknowledging the unique circumstances surrounding Somaliland’s quest for international recognition that cannot be likened to the Pandora’s box analogy, which moves Somaliland into an object of being. A later paragraph assigns Somaliland with a subject position, by referring to the authorities of Somaliland and its people to ‘deploy efforts’ in regards to advance in the recognition game:

“Whilst it remains a primary responsibility of the authorities and people of Somaliland to deploy efforts to acquire political recognition from the international community, the AU should be disposed to judge the case of Somaliland from an objective historical viewpoint and a moral angle vis-à-vis the aspirations of the people” (AU, 2005: paragraph 10; ICG, 2006:1). This paragraph also highlights that the final ruling belongs to the AU, which is recommended to consider Somaliland’s recognition claims on moral grounds vis-á-vis the wishes of the people. In this sense, the statement instates the principle of self-determination as that which should be made the deciding principle for the AU.

This is further highlighted by another paragraph, where Somaliland is attributed a subject position as an agent that is kept from preforming its agency: “The lack of recognition for Somaliland ties the hands of the authorities and people of Somaliland as they cannot effectively and sustainably transact with the outside [world] to pursue the reconstruction and development goals” (AU, 2005: paragraph 9). This is an indirect description of an entity with management competencies, hence a subject that is prevented to act as such because it is kept in non-recognition. This means that Somaliland cannot act as the statement’s subject description presumes it to do. Hence, the statement appear rather paradoxical as it acknowledge Somaliland’s achievements despite the lack of the sought-after recognition, hence Somaliland is fixed somewhere between contested and just entity.

3.3.2 International Consciousness

The conclusion from the AU fact-finding mission brought Somaliland to life as a social and discursive fact as Somaliland was “clothed with the relevant attributes of a ‘modern State’ (AU, 2005:para 7a). The mission’s recommendations, however, stayed unpublished, which meant that the AU took no concrete actions on their findings and the question of the territory’s status remained unaddressed. Hence, the AU neither approved nor rejected Somaliland’s claim of recognition.

This equivocal movement towards engaging with Somaliland and acknowledging its empirical qualities, while at the same time asserting Somaliland in non-recognition is a movement that gradually starts to appear in the articulations from both single state actors and some of the supranational organisations such as EU and the AU. Hence, from 2005 we see a gradual movement of Somaliland into the consciousness of the broader international community.

United Kingdom, South Africa, Denmark, Ethiopia, Djibouti were some of the states that through the second half of 2000s initiated political or trade ties, while strongly affirming that the ties do not signal recognition of Somaliland (ICG, 2008; Brenthurst Foundation, 2011).

Ethiopia opened an embassy in Somaliland in 2006, while maintaining that its diplomatic propositions do not constitute recognition of Somaliland (Lee-St. John, 2006:16). In December 2007, US Secretary of Defence, Robert Gates addressed Somaliland in a discussion concerning the escalating conflict in Somalia (Washingtonpost, 2007). According to Washington Post, a senior defence official said, “Somaliland is an entity that works… We’re caught between a rock and a hard place because they’re not a recognized state” (Washingtonpost, 2007). The Pentagon’s view is that “Somaliland should be independent … We should build up the parts that are functional and box in Somalia’s unstable regions, particularly around Mogadishu”, another defense official said (Washingtonpost, 2007).

The AU requested all Horn of Africa countries to deal with Somaliland similar as a country: In 2008, the AU followed up its fact-finding mission with a special envoy to Somaliland. The mission recommend that, “As a peace dividend, the international community should provide institutional capacity building support to Somaliland infrastructure and facilitate its access to the international and regional financial institutions and banking systems… The African Union Commission and [the subregional Inter-Governmental Authority on Development] should explore channels of communication and dialogue with the Somaliland authorities, and establish the best way they could be integrated into the regional socio- economic and political discourses including issues such as migration, illegal smuggling of arms, the fight against piracy and displacement of populations” (AU, 2008). The term peace dividend refers to the reallocation of spending from military purposes to peacetime purposes as the benefits derived are much more valuable.

The EU pushed back Somaliland recognition between Somaliland-Somalia then into AU: In the EU Commission’s joint Strategy Paper for the period 2008-2013 it is stated “the EU and Norway consider the territorial integrity of Somalia an issue to be resolved first and foremost among Somalis themselves, and then to be addressed by the African Union” (EU, 2008:11). This is the general message delivered by Western states, which extends no formal recognition to Somaliland referring the issue to an African solution to Somaliland’s international status (ICG, 2006: 13; European Commission, 2008:11). However, despite officially keeping their hands off the Somaliland question, the EU’s development strategy did involve a regional volume, which takes account of Somaliland’s “home-grown development plans” (EU, 2008:18). While the regional volume does not address Somaliland’s recognition claims, the EU does acknowledge Somaliland as an important and stable regional political entity.

3.4.1 Somaliland in the international discourse:

Somalia has inherited a mafioso mentality from Italy in the 1960s, with Hawiye and Darood tribes witnessing Somaliland gaining international recognition. In 2010, Somalia engaged Puntland (a Darood region) as a counterbalance in international discussions with the US and AU. They depict of Puntland, a small Somali region, is similar to that of Somaliland.

Somalia attempted to thwart the international community’s dual-track policy; the Hawiye and Darood clans will actively impede Somaliland’s access to development aid and international partnerships. They despise a strong Somaliland economy because it thwarts their long-term goal of absorbing Somaliland. Somaliland’s aspirations are weakened by the EU’s support for the Horn of Africa integration project.

1.            Somalia’s embargo on Somaliland hinders its access to resources, development aid, and infrastructure development by restricting exports and government revenue.

2.            Somalia is implementing a long-term strategy to facilitate Hawiye & Darood takeover in Somaliland through business promotion.

3.            Somalia promotes the idea of marrying Somaliland women to eventually surpass Somaliland’s population.

4.            Four major Somaliland cities (Hargeisa, Berbera, Burco, and Borama) are targeted by Somalia to attract immigrants and businesses. The census shows that most immigrants come from Ogaden, Majeerteen, Sool Dhulbahante, and Habar Gedir. Over the next three decades, Somalilanders could be in the minority, potentially swaying the votes of true Somalilanders to prevent the recognition of Somaliland.

3.4.4 The Republic of Somaliland Recognised as a Self-­‐governing Entity

As concluded above, despite that the question of Somaliland’s recognition remained absent in the international conferences. The statement points to a dual leadership of Somalia consisting of the Federal Government of Somalia and the Government of Somaliland. In other words, Somaliland appears as a state of fact, whose voice cannot be ignored, hence it engages in dialogues over the future of Somalia on equal terms with the Federal Government of Somalia.

In 2013, the UN too began to refer to Somaliland and its authorities, moving from a previous position that avoided a titular articulation of Somaliland and if so referring to it as the Northwest of Somalia.

3.4.5 Somaliland as a Special Arrangement

Somalia conference in Brussels seals Somaliland recognition as self-governing part of the Somalia federal and so far, the leaders of Somaliland hasn’t told their population the New Deal for Somalia conference, a landmark conference where the world community gathered in Brussels to reaffirm their support for Somalia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity with the endorsement of the Somali Compact (SC).

–              Somaliland leaders are well aware that the EU sold a lemon to the Republic of Somaliland: Somaliland was told they are a distinct and separate from Somalia only as a local government under the Somalia federal, which Somaliland can deal in equal foot with Somalia the development partner of the international community. But that is lie, every development must be approve from Mogadishu government to help Somaliland. However, this approach is form of imperialism: They told Somaliland leaders “Let us help your population but only we can help you if you take the deal of accepting Somaliland as regional under the Somalia federal, without it the international laws doesn’t allow us to help you”. This time, the Somalilanders leaders sold the sovereignty of Somaliland that to the international community instead what they have done in 1960s to the mafioso mentality of Somalia:

–              One thing, the Somalilanders leaders doesn’t understand is the Republic of Somaliland is entity itself and they don’t own it but they are just caretaker in the behalf of their population.

–              Everybody in the world knows Somalilander have blind-spot and that is their hate for Somalia.

–              This time, Somalia use the European Union behind door close by italy supporting this roadmap against the sovereignty of Somaliland, conflicts with the first part of the SC, which reaffirms the international community’s support for Somalia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.

4. Analyse II -­‐ The Somaliland Special Arrangement

”Of all the rights that can belong to a nation, sovereignty is doubtless the most precious” (Emerich De Vattel, The Law of Nations, 1995)

The historical evolution of discourse on Somaliland’s self-governance in 2013 demonstrates its development from prior discussions, shifting its status from non-existent to unrecognised and finally self-determination under the Somalia Federal.

4.1 Framing the Somaliland Special Arrangement: Look who’s who Somaliland enemies

The New Deal Compact is presented to the world at an international conference in Brussels, co-hosted by the European Union and Somalia in September 2013, where the international community and Somalia endorses the Somali Compact (SC), a roadmap on ‘the priorities of’ Somalia’s political process and development between 2014-2016 (EU, 2013). The conference speaker list included the President of the FGS, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud; the President of the European Union, Herman Van Rompuy; the Minister of Development Cooperation of Denmark, Christian Friis Bach; the President of the European Commision, Jose Manuel Barroso; the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Somalia, UN, Nicholas Kay; the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Turkey, Naci Koru (EU, 2013). Somaliland had chosen not to participate and is not referred to in any of the speeches held by the above mentioned. Hence, in the context of the physical conference Somaliland is literally an object of non-being.

The international community’s self-placement within that equation furthermore establishes Somaliland’s state identity vis-à-vis other states and ‘international’ community, which means that a discourse move is made towards the discourses of sovereignty. Hence, despite not explicitly providing Somaliland with recognition as an independent state by keeping it as a regional part of the wider Somalia federation, the SSA displays international support around Somaliland ownership and leadership, which grants a high degree of self-determination to Somaliland.

4.3 The Modes of Subjectification: Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Th EU sphere of influence indirect imperialism economic interest to hold back Somaliland recognition. I sense Italy hand behind this roadmap:

In this way, the SSA asserts itself as an attempt to manage Somaliland’s self- determination and autonomy and claim of recognition, which essentially means controlling the identity Somaliland can take in the world. The SSA becomes the international community’s management of the freedom of the self-governed, which means that self-governance has an immanent constraint, which points to the abstract nature of power: freedom/constraint. As a result, Somaliland’s recognition becomes subject of a double bind: the SSA establishes that Somaliland has the competence to fulfil its international and domestic obligations, hence its nomination as a self-governing entity, while the SSA at the same time, manages Somaliland’s conduct and thereby installs a self-limitation in Somaliland. Hence, it is the international community that commands what will actually come to pass: the governing authorities and their constitution must be designed in accordance with the international community’s understandings of what is appropriate. In the context of treaties Erik Ringmar notes, “the right that the treaty granted were the very same rights that the treaty revoked” (Ringmar, 2010:12). This observation is apparent in the way Somaliland is given agency and at the same time subjected in the SSA. In other words, the Somaliland government is unable to oppose the externally scripted storylines that places Somaliland within discourses on its stateness, if it wishes to excise governance.

The conditionality Somaliland’s statehood is attributed can further be seen in the subtle formulation framing the SSA as “a living document… allowing enough flexibility for a changing contextual environment” (SC, 2013:21) In this regard, the international community has assigned itself with a carte blanche, which means that Somaliland’s self-governance is potentially subject to alterations.

4.4 Conclusion: How the international community currently manages Somaliland?

The SSA further establishes the Somaliland government as a somewhat conditional member of the international community by recognising it as an equal development partner. This membership entails a high degree of self-determination; however, it has to be exercised in accordance with the mandate of the SSA, which in this way structures Somaliland’s stateness and authority. Hence, Somaliland has to be organised internally in a particular way, in order for the international community to acknowledge it as a legitimate self-governing entity. The storylines that accompanies Somaliland in the SSA such as democratisation, good governance, and human rights, places the Somali people as the centre for the Somaliland government’s responsibility, which provision conditions both its recognition in regards to statehood and its authority.

Somaliland’s assigned authority over internal matters could be mistaken for granting of sovereignty, which according to the modern political understanding is authority over a political entity, and the right to speak and act for this entity externally. However, Somaliland is not given freedom to decide over internal matter nor authority to act for Somaliland externally, hence the essential rights that characterise a state as sovereign. Furthermore, the SC never addresses the basic form of the Somali state, including the depth of federalism and decentralisation, which is left to constitutional negotiation between the Somalis. This means that Somaliland’s request for independence is never addressed, despite the institutionalisation of Somaliland as statehood with leadership and ownership.

The way Somaliland is constituted in the SSA allows Somaliland to uphold its delineation from Somalia, and perform a state-like international presence in deference to its earlier ‘statehood’. Somaliland claimed recognition as an independent state and got a conditional partnership, which came with an institutionalised liberal understanding of self-limitation and freedom through which Somaliland is produced and regulated.

5. Conclusion

How has the international community managed dilemmas in regards to Somaliland’s claim of recognition as a sovereign state?

The storylines that articulate Somaliland as capable of fulfilling the contemporary state responsibility in regards to democratic management and provision of services expands through 2010, 2011 and 2012, when Somaliland begins to be seen as a strategic partner in the war against terror. In 2012 and early 2013, Somaliland starts to enter the international arena as an authority in Somali development issues, and is invited to share lessons from its own democratic development path.

In September 2013, Somaliland can no longer be ignored, and is established as an object for policy-making. The New Deal conference recognises Somaliland’s political autonomy and grants Somaliland authority as an equal development partner.

It was on the foundation of several previous articulations and selections, which had depicted Somaliland as a responsible agent, that the international community came to constitute Somaliland as a self- governing part of the federal Somalia with whom they could establish an equal partnership in regards to their development agenda on Somalia.

The recognition of Somaliland raises one essential question; how Somalia and Somaliland can exist side-by-side claiming authority over the same territory?

This analysis emanates from the Somaliland Special Arrangement (SSA), which recognised Somaliland as a self-governing federal entity and equal development partner and in this way presents a new political order. However, in regards to Somaliland’s constitution in SSA, it becomes apparent that two competing entitlements are at play. The international community identify Somaliland as a political community that is allowed to make certain claims to authority over a certain territory, and further as a political entity with whom the international community can have an equal partnership in regards to the internationally established development agenda for Somaliland. In this regard, Somaliland is recognised as a subject rather than an object by linking its stateness (authority, territory and population) with external recognition.

Recognition is sovereignty’s defining maker, however a number of strategies are employed to never formally establish Somaliland as a sovereign entity. Firstly, the Federal Government of Somalia (FGS) is recognised as the sovereign, which through the SC’s strategy plan is intended to unite, stabilise, and democratise.

The recognition of self-governance offered in SSA should not be conflated with recognition of sovereignty, which is the external recognition of claims to authority. Somaliland is given a certain subjectivity (a degree of self-determination) in the policy document that sets out the goals for Somalia over the next couple of years. In this sense, the SC document illustrates that the international community currently holds actual authority, which is only released conditionally to restore Somalia’s sovereignty through the SC and the SSA.

The analysis has showed the political and constitutional nature of recognition. Somaliland is assured and given content through the practise of recognition, which means that Somaliland is dependent on recognition to become a state in the international system. By examining the international community’s management the conditions for recognition are opened up for investigation, which uncovers the conditions for authority. In other words, recognition processes shape the conditions for the exercise of authority. The analysis showed that the relation between state and society is particularly central for the way authority is perceived in the SSA. Somaliland’s authority is constituted around the concepts of democratisation, good governance, and human rights, which stipulate Somaliland’s government’s authority to a liberal management of its domestic society.

5.1 Wider Reflections

From this contention Somaliland is an actor that participates in the production on its own constitution within the international discourse. In this way, the relational struggle between the international community and Somaliland in terms of defining Somaliland’s identity could have been investigated by ascribing Somaliland a subject position in its own right, following its international performances that gradually assisted to reify its status. A theoretical perspective that could have been used for this purpose is a Laclau informed discourse analysis, which would have enabled a study of how sovereignty is negotiated in micro centred negotiations between the international community and the involved parties, such as Somaliland and Somalia.

The international community’s management of Somaliland’s claim of recognition becomes a reproducing platform where sovereignty asserts its boundary. In this way, Somaliland’s claim of recognition as an independent state does not challenge or interrupt sovereignty as the basic organising principle in the international society of states, on the contrary the international management of Somaliland produces and reaffirms sovereignty as the organising principle of the international system. The politics of recognition and non- recognition is thus played out as a constitutive game, where the international society upholds itself with help from what it is different from, from what is excluded. The premise followed is then that contested states “are not a transgression or violation of Sovereignty”, since contested statehood “can only be defined on the basis of a prior albeit often hidden conceptualization and assumption of sovereignty” (Malmvig, 2006:xx)